


Buried Undead

by PinkCowie



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: BJ is newly dead, Backstory-wise that is, Claustrophobia, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Juno is Not a good mom guys, Juno is a dick, Self-Indulgent, and the fact that he had a Life instead of being born dead is entirely headcanon, so basically: my city now, this is entirely based on my own hcs for beetlejuice's Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 15:37:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkCowie/pseuds/PinkCowie
Summary: Lawrence Betelgeuse Ackerman hung himself, tragically, a few weeks after the suicide of his fiancee, expecting that they'd be reunited in death. What he didn't expect was to wake up in his own grave, come to terms with the fact that he was dead, and have to deal with his demon of a mother (no, really, a literal demon) reappearing in his afterlife.





	Buried Undead

**Author's Note:**

> This is a VERY self-indulgent oneshot exploring one of my personal ideas for Musical!BJ's backstory, based partially on the original movie idea that he hung himself over a woman. All you need to know for my (completely baseless, incoherent) headcanon backstory for him is that his dad was a human and Beetlejuice grew up with him for the first few years of his life, then spent the rest of his childhood with Juno before trying to lead a somewhat normal life in the human world! Of course, that... didn't end well for him, but hey, how was he supposed to know that kicking it would cement his place as a demon in the afterlife?
> 
> I wrote this out in about three hours in an ice-cream induced haze and it somehow managed to produce writing I'm proud of. Enjoy!

It was dark.

That was the first thing Lawrence noticed when he opened his eyes. Though, in all honesty, it was the kind of dark that made it impossible to tell whether one’s eyes were open or closed, if one didn’t have a good sense of what that felt like. But Lawrence was fairly certain he’d just woken up, because he hadn’t been feeling or doing or seeing much of anything before he realized it was very, very dark. In the absence of sight, his other senses tripped over themselves to try to figure out where he was. The smell of dirt and musk permeated the stale air, and though he strained his ears, no sound greeted them. The complete silence seemed... uncanny, unnatural, though he couldn’t put a finger on why.

The second thing he noticed was that he was lying down somewhere. He tried to sit up, but he hadn’t even moved his head that far before it slammed into something heavy, and wooden, and positioned directly above him. Stunned by the blow, yet feeling no pain, he sank back down and extended his arms out only to be greeted with two more slabs of wood on either side of him. A little more jostling and kicking revealed it was some kind of wooden box he seemed to be in, trapping him on all sides.

As he lay there, his brain finally caught up with him, the events preceding this moment playing in his mind. Abagail. The rope. A hand shot to his neck, and under the clammy skin, he could feel the dislocated bones that revealed to him just how close he’d come to succeeding.

It hadn’t worked. He was still alive.

He’d been buried alive.

He waited for the panic to hit him, for his breathing to constrict and his hands to start shaking like they always did, because really, if any situation was worth having an anxiety attack over, it was this one. But the longer he waited, the more he became aware of the dullness sitting inside his chest, filling his lungs and extending into every limb. This was a horrific, terrifying, death-dealing position to be in, and yet the only thing he felt as he thought about that was... nothing.

He must be in shock. That would make sense. That would explain why he wasn’t reacting the way he knew he should be, why he felt so cold and numb inside. The need to get out of there struck him like a hammer to the forehead. As much as he’d wanted to leave this mortal plane before, suffocating to death in his own grave held no appeal to him, and the benefits of living were starting to look more and more persuasive. He pushed up against the lid of the box — coffin — first, testing its strength against his own. The cheap wood protested with a series of creaks, but barely seemed to budge even with his full force behind it. Of course it didn’t — there must’ve been six feet of solid earth above him. He tried kicking next, futilely, then gave the lid another shove, but ended up exactly as helpless as he’d been before. He had no idea who’d buried him, or paid for the funeral, if he’d had one, but it seemed that even the simplest and tackiest of coffins was enough to trap him.

Something hot trickled its way into his chest as he stared up at the coffin’s lid and contemplated this (as best he could stare when he couldn’t see, that is), and he was almost relieved to be feeling anything at all. Almost.

That feeling, he quickly identified, was anger, bubbling through him more viciously than it ever had before. What kind of cruel trick was the Almighty playing on him, letting him die like this? What kind of incompetent dipshits didn’t notice that their stiff was still breathing when they put him in the ground? And why couldn’t he succeed at a single thing in his miserable life, not even ending it? The indignity of it all made him want to tear his hair out. With a snarl, he suddenly slammed a fist into the lid above him, which proved to be a more than awkward movement in such a confined space. He didn’t care. He flexed his fingers and hit it again, then again, pummeling the wood to indulge the new ferocity ferreted away inside him. At least this was better than indifference.

The loud crack of wood splintering brought him to his senses and alerted him to the fact that, holy shit, he’d gotten somewhere. His hand didn’t even ache from the repeated blows. Feeling a bit of that rage ebb away from him, he felt along the lid of the coffin blindly, finding the spot where he’d begun to punch through it. There was a thin crack starting to run through the length of the wood, parallel to his body. If he could just break that wood, he could... be choked to death by dirt instead of dying in his coffin. Whatever, at least if he died doing that, it would be better than going out without a fight. Accepting that he wouldn’t mean anything to the living world even if he returned to it. He gritted his teeth and formed a fist once more, refusal to let his death mean nothing fueling him when determination couldn’t.

Two more blows and a couple of quick jabs with his knee, and the lid seemed ready to break apart at any moment. Particles of dirt had been slipping through the cracks and raining onto his face more and more with each hit. He wiped them away and consciously took a deep breath to prepare himself, the air settling oddly within his lungs, and shoved his knee up against the substantial crack one last time.

He could feel the wood split, and, though he couldn’t see it, soil begin to spill into the coffin at a quick rate. It poured onto his lap as he pushed the lid out of the way, fighting his way into a sitting position, and mustered his strength for the final part of his escape.

A minute later, Lawrence dragged himself, filthy and sickly, out of his own grave.

The cool night air kissed his freezing cold skin as he clambered as far away as he could from the tombstone that he didn’t bother to look at. He wasn’t shaking from exertion or panting for breath like he might’ve expected to be. His heart wasn’t even beating any louder. In fact, as he knelt there against the ground, the whistling of the wind and the chirp of crickets filling the silence that had suffocated him down below, he finally figured out what had been so awful, so unsettling, so terrifying about that silence. What sound had been missing.

Before he could process that, the moonlight glinted on a pair of shiny red pumps situated right in front of him. His gaze travelled up, up the figure of the woman they were attached to, fixing on the lit end of the cigarette she held clamped to her mouth. When she saw that he’d noticed her, she took a long drag and blew the smoke down towards his face.

“Took you long enough.”

“Mom?”

His voice sounded hoarser, more gravelly than he’d remembered it. He guessed that made sense. He’d never hung himself before, but he probably should’ve expected a little damage to his vocal chords, especially now that he was dead.

Dead. He was dead.

He brought a hand to his throat, his fingers settling on a band of ruined skin where the noose had caught him. “I didn’t — I thought I’d —” That rasp was going to take some getting used to. He swallowed thickly before speaking again. “I died.”

The demon Juno sighed and flicked a few ashes off her cigarette. “You always were quick, weren’t you, Lawrence? Yeah, you’re dead. Congratulations, mazel tov, whatever the kids say these days. Now are you gonna make me wait here all night, or are you gonna get up like a good boy and let me be done with this?”

His head should’ve been reeling, but it was with a mindless obedience that he pushed himself up from the ground, brushing some of the dirt from his suit as he did so.

She only grunted in acknowledgment that he’d done what she asked. “Now, you killed yourself,” she said clinically, like it wasn’t the suicide of her own son she was talking about. “You know what that means.”

He didn’t. She’d never told him. The cluelessness must’ve been apparent on his face, because Juno let out an annoyed sigh and took another drag off her cigarette.

“Honestly, it’s like you never listen to me,” she grumbled as Lawrence waved the smoke out of his face. “Normally, suicides get assigned to civil service. But you aren’t exactly a typical case, are you?”

He had no idea if he was supposed to respond to that. “Uh — no?”

Her withering glare could’ve killed, if he weren’t already — well, you know. “That’s right, dumbass. You’re my son, and I can’t have you filing paperwork for eternity, as nice as that’d be for me. I’ve got a legacy to uphold, and you—” she punctuated the word with a jab towards his chest — “are that legacy.” Her eyes swept up and down his dirt-covered suit, the dumbfounded way he held himself, and her lips pursed together tightly. “Disappointing as you are.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the numbness still tingling in his veins or his familiarity with the insults that kept her comments from stinging. At least, he told himself they didn’t sting. He had better things to focus on anyway. “So what does that mean for me?”

“It means, I’ve graciously decided to allow you back in my home, in the Netherworld,” she stated as if this were the hardest and most noble decision she’d ever had to make.

He winced at the name of the realm where he’d passed so many of his childhood years, his memories of the place tinted with a haze of death and depression and his mom’s booze. She must’ve noticed his reaction, because she raised an eyebrow as if challenging him to say something.

“Great,” he responded flatly, running a hand through his hair, which he was mildly surprised to find sticking straight up. “Great. Okay.” There were still a million questions running through his mind, but he knew his mother wouldn’t tolerate them all, so he settled on the most demanding one, the one buzzing at the forefront of his thoughts. “What about Abagail?”

She gave him a blank stare. “Who?”

He should’ve expected that. He fought down the heat of shame growing in his chest, that told him he was making a fool of himself, and pressed onwards. “Abagail Jacobsen, my... my fiancée. She... A few weeks before I...” He couldn’t finish the thought.

Juno’s expression betrayed her utter indifference. “Oh, right.” Another puff from her cigarette. At least his lungs weren’t aching from it anymore. “Suicide. She’ll be somewhere in the bureaucracy. Don’t worry, you won’t have to bother with her anymore.”

“But — can’t I — I wanna see her, mom. We were gonna be together, I...”

Her tone was sharper than usual as she cut him off. “You’re a demon, and, regrettably, the heir to the Netherworld’s throne. She was a pitiful mortal woman who dragged you down and was only useful for hurrying you along in coming into your power.” The statement was punctuated by her grinding her cigarette out against her palm and tossing it over her shoulder. “Forget about her. You’ll have more important things to worry about back home.”

It felt like a rockslide had occurred right on top of his lungs, which was odd, because he didn’t even need to breathe anymore. His gaze was unfocused as he stared at a point just past her, hands clenched into fists, tongue too dry to argue. He wondered, absently, if this was the same graveyard Abagail had been buried in. He didn’t think he’d get the chance to find out.

Juno seemed to consider that the end of the conversation. She snapped her fingers, and a piece of white chalk appeared in her hand. Briskly, she marched over to a tombstone adjacent to his, and, as he watched, drew the crude shape of a door on top of Esra Mendenhall’s grave, whoever that poor bastard had been. A series of quick knocks, and a portal to the Netherworld had been opened, the green glow spilling over the damp grass below her feet. She glanced at Lawrence and narrowed her eyes.

“One more thing before we go. You’ll have to get rid of that obnoxious name.”

He was snapped out of his daze by the sound of her voice, his brow furrowing with confusion at her words. His throat still felt thick and slow with emotion when he spoke. “My name? What’s wrong with it?”

Her exasperation was obvious as she explained it to him. “Lawrence is no name for a demon. Take on your proper name.” She gestured back to his modest tombstone, where the simple inscription honored one Lawrence Betelgeuse Ackerman. “Betelgeuse. Now doesn’t that sound better?”

A lump formed in his throat, and he shook his head falteringly, though he suspected it was futile. “But... I’m Lawrence. Dad gave me that name.”

“And I gave you this name. Don’t argue with me again, Betelgeuse, my patience is running thin with you tonight.” The venom in her voice was biting, slicing through whatever resistance he was still holding onto. His head dropped, and he gave her a quick, wordless nod. Satisfied, she gestured for him to join her at the portal, and he obliged. Before they could depart, Juno shot him one more look with a frown.

“Why is your hair purple?”

He stared up at her, taken aback. “What?”

A disappointed sigh escaped her lips, and he got the feeling he’d be hearing that sound a lot from now on. “Forget it. Come on.”

A reddish-orange star twinkled in the sky above as Betelgeuse swept his gaze over his resting place one last time and stepped dutifully through the door to the rest of his afterlife.


End file.
